"'Answer me,' said she, 'thou bold Spaniard,' (for that was a name she seemed fond of, which gave me to imagine, that boldness was a qualification she was not displeased with. 'Tis not unusual with our vain sex," observed he, "to construe even reproaches to our advantage,") 'is the lady here, whose shackles thou wearest?'—'Do I look like a man shackled, my fairest Nun?'—'No—no! not much like such an one. But I fancy thy wife is either a Widow or a Quaker.'—'Neither,' replied I, taking, by equivocation, her question literally.
"'And art thou not a married wretch? Answer me quickly!—We are observed.'—'No,' said I.—'Swear to me, thou art not.'—'By St. Ignatius, then;' for, my dear, I was no wretch, you know.—'Enough!' said she, and slid away; and the Fanatic would fain have engaged her, but she avoided him as industriously.
"Before I was aware, she was at my elbow, and, in Italian, said, 'That fair Quaker, yonder, is the wit of the assemblée; her eyes seem always directed to thy motions; and her person shews some intimacies have passed with somebody; is it with thee?'—'It would be my glory if it was,' said I, 'were her face answerable to her person.'—'Is it not?'—'I long to know,'" replied Mr. B.—"I am glad thou dost not."—"I am glad to hear my fair Nun say that."—"Dost thou," said she, "hate shackles? Or is it, that thy hour is not yet come?"
"I wish," replied he, "this be not the hour, the very hour!" pretending (naughty gentleman!—What ways these men have!) to sigh.
She went again to the side-board, and put her handkerchief upon it. Mr. B. followed, and observed all her motions. She drank a glass of lemonade, as he of Burgundy; and a person in a domino, supposed to be the King, passing by, took up every one's attention but Mr. B.'s who eyed her handkerchief, not doubting but she laid it there on purpose to forget to take it up. Accordingly she left it there; and slipping by him, he, unobserved, as he believes, put it in his pocket, and at the corner found the cover of a letter—"To the Right Honourable the Countess Dowager of ——"
That after this, the fair Nun was so shy, so reserved, and seemed so studiously to avoid him, that he had no opportunity to return her handkerchief; and the Fanatic observing how she shunned him, said, in French, "What, Monsieur, have you done to your Nun?"
"I found her to be a very coquette; and told her so; and she is offended."
"How could you affront a lady," replied he, "with such a charming face?
"By that I had reason to think," said Mr. B., "that he had seen her unmask; and I said, 'It becomes not any character, but that you wear, to pry into the secrets of others, in order to make ill-natured remarks, and perhaps to take ungentlemanlike advantages.'"
"No man should make that observation," returned he, "whose views would bear prying into."